Tennessee Vols to open 2015 football season in Nashville against UAB

Tennessee Vols to open 2015 football season in Nashville against UAB

KNOXVILLE -- Tennessee will head west to start its 2015 football season.

The Volunteers are heading only a couple hours down Interstate 40, though.

Barely 24 hours after inking a 2014 recruiting class with eight mid-state prospects, Tennessee announced it will open the 2015 season against UAB at Nashville's LP Field, home of the Tennessee Titans.

The Vols' efforts to increase their presence in the Nashville area now has them playing a non-conference neutral-site in the state's capital.

In Tennessee's release, athletic director Dave Hart said he had discussed the idea of playing the 2015 opener in Nashville with Scott Ramsey, the president and CEO of the Nashville Sports Council, "for more than a year."

Though the Vols visit Vanderbilt every other year, the Vols last played at LP Field in the Music City Bowl in 2010 against North Carolina, and coach Phillip Fulmer's Vols hammered Wyoming 47-7 there in 2002.

"It is exciting to have this come to fruition, and we look forward to opening our season in front of a great crowd in Nashville," said Hart, Tennessee's third-year athletic director.

To make the game work in an area that "is a priority for us from the perspective of recruiting, our fans and our alumni," Hart said, Tennessee had to make some scheduling adjustments.

A home-and-home series with Connecticut scheduled for 2015 and 2016 has been suspended, presumably to a later date, by a "mutual agreement" between the schools, according to Tennessee's release. A week after facing UAB in Nashville, the Vols will play Oklahoma in Knoxville in the return game from Tennessee's trip to Norman this fall.

Tennessee reached an agreement with Virginia Tech to play a game at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016. The Vols still will play seven home games, according to the release. Barring significant changes to its league scheduling by the SEC, Tennessee would play at Florida, Alabama, Missouri and Kentucky on the road in 2015.

Hart said when Bristol game against Virginia Tech was announced that he was in discussions with six other cities regarding future such neutral-site games.

"With the momentum that coach [Butch] Jones is building throughout the state," Ramsey said, "it should be a full stadium with a great atmosphere in downtown Nashville."